The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research
Organisation (CSIRO) is the national
government body for scientific research in Australia. It was founded in 1926 originally
as the Advisory Council of Science and Industry.

Recently, CSIRO has been actively defending its patent[3] for the
use of wireless
technologies which are a standard for many modern day laptops. A
class action has been filed by US corporations Microsoft, Apple and Dell to renege on paying royalties on the wireless
patent filed by CSIRO in 1996.

In October 2005 the journal Nature announced that CSIRO
scientists had developed near-perfect rubber from resilin, the elastic protein
which gives fleas their jumping ability and helps insects fly.[4] On 19
August 2005, CSIRO and UTD (University of Dallas, Texas) announced
they were able to make transparent carbon nanotube sheets that will bring
carbon nanotube products to the masses.

Research groups and
initiatives

Employing over 6600 staff, CSIRO maintains more than 50 sites
across Australia and biological control research stations in France and Mexico. The primary roles of CSIRO include
contributing to meeting the objectives and responsibilities of the
Australian Federal Government and providing new ways to benefit the
Australian community and the economic and social performance of a
number of industry sectors through research and development.

Research undertaken by CSIRO is divided into operational
'Divisions'. These are[5]:

In 2007, the divisions of Industrial Physics and Manufacturing
and Materials Technology merged to form a new division, Materials
Science and Engineering.

In addition, CSIRO is a participant in a number of joint
ventures, including:

Ensis — forestry and forest products, with New Zealand's
Forestry research organisation named Scion

Food Science Australia — with the Victorian Government
(known as "CSIRO Division of Food and Nutritional Sciences" as of 1
July 2009[6])

The Australian e-Health Research Centre — with the
Queensland Government

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"Flagship" initiative

The CSIRO "Flagship" initiative was designed to integrate, focus
and direct national scientific resources. In May 2005, the
government announced the launch of CSIRO's $97 million Flagship
Collaboration Fund, which is intended to encourage cooperative
research between universities, CSIRO and other research
agencies.

The "Australian Air Quality Forecasting System" is provided
jointly by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO. The
Bureau of Meteorology generates the high resolution weather
forecasts and CSIRO has created computer models to calculate
pollution levels.

History

A precursor to CSIRO, the Advisory Council of Science and
Industry, was established in 1916 at the initiative of Prime
Minister Billy
Hughes. However, the Advisory Council struggled with
insufficient funding during the First World War. In
1920 the Council was renamed the "Commonwealth Institute of Science
and Industry", and was led by George Handley Knibbs (1921-26),
but continued to struggle financially.

In 1926 The Science and Industry Research Act replaced
the Institute with the 'Council for Scientific and Industrial
Research' (CSIR). The CSIR was structured to represent the federal
structure of Australian government, and had state-level committees
and a central council. As well as this improved structure, the CSIR
benefited from strong bureaucratic management under George Julius, David Rivett, and
Arnold Richardson. CSIR research focussed on primary and secondary
industries. Early in its existence, it established divisions
studying animal health and animal nutrition. After the depression,
the CSIR extended into secondary industries such as
manufacturing.

CSIRO today has expanded into a wider range of scientific
inquiry. This expansion began with the establishment of CSIRO in
1949 which, as well as a name change, reconstituted the
organisation and its administrative structure. Under Ian Clunies
Ross as chairman, CSIRO pursued new areas such as
radioastronomy and industrial chemistry.

Historic
research

CSIRO owned the first computer in Australia, CSIRAC, built as part of a project began in the
Sydney Radiophysics Laboratory in 1947. The CSIR Mk 1 ran its first
program in 1949, the fifth electronic computer in the world. It was
over 1000 times faster than the mechanical calculators available at
the time. It was decommissioned in 1955 and recommissioned in
Melbourne as CSIRAC in 1956 as a general purpose computing machine
used by over 700 projects until 1964.[16] The
CSIRAC is the only surviving first-generation computer in the
world.[17]

Between 1965 and 1985, Dr. George Bornemissza of CSIRO's
Division of Entomology founded and led the Australian Dung Beetle
Project. Dr. Bornemissza, upon settling in Australia from Hungary in 1951, noticed that
the pastureland was covered in dry cattle dung pads which did not
seem to be recycled into the soil and caused areas of rank pasture
that was unpalatable to the cattle. He proposed that the reason for
this was that native Australian dung beetles, which had co-evolved
alongside the marsupials (which produce dung very different in its
composition from cattle), were not adapted to utilise cattle dung
for their nutrition and breeding, since cattle had only relatively
recently been introduced to the continent in the 1880s. The
Australian Dung Beetle Project therefore, sought to introduce
species of dung beetle from South Africa and Europe (which had
co-evolved alongside bovids) in order to improve the fertility and
quality of cattle pastures. 23 species were successfully introduced
throughout the duration of the project and also had the effect of
reducing the pestilent bush fly population by 90%.[18].

Domain
name

CSIRO was the first Australian organisation to start using the
internet, and as such was free to register the second-level domaincsiro.au (as opposed to csiro.org.au or
csiro.com.au). Guidelines were introduced in 1996 to regulate the
use of the .au domain.

Recent
controversies

Diet book

In 2005 the organisation also gained worldwide attention (and
criticism) for publishing and promoting the Total Wellbeing
Diet book[20] which
features a high-protein,
low-carbohydratediet. The book has sold over
half a million copies in Australia and over 100,000 overseas[21] but
was criticised in an editorial by Nature for giving scientific
credence to a "fashionable" diet book sponsored by meat and dairy
industries.[22]

802.11
patent

CSIRO has consistently maintained that it owns the rights to a
key part of modern IEEE
802.11 protocols with U.S. Patent
5,487,069. It declined to sign a Letter of Assurance
that no lawsuits would be filed over its use in the 802.11n
currently gaining acceptance.[23]
In late November 2007, CSIRO won a lawsuit against Buffalo
Technology, with an injunction that Buffalo must stop supplying AirStation products that infringe on the
802.11 patent.

On September 19, 2008, the Federal Circuit ruled in Buffalo’s
favour and remanded the case to the district court ruling that the
district court’s Summary Judgement was insufficient on the merits
of obviousness of CSIRO’s patent. Therefore, this case was to be
tried again before the district court. In this connection Buffalo
was hopeful that it would shortly be permitted to, once again, sell
IEEE 802.11a and 802.11g compliant products in the United
States.[23][24] On
the 13 July 2009 Buffalo announced the settlement of the patent
infringement action.[25]

CSIRO recently obtained a settlement from HP over the use of its
WiFi patent and negotiating with other companies such as Nintendo,
Dell, Microsoft, etc.[26]
However, Apple Computer and 8 other technology companies (a total
of 9 companies) are continuing their class-action lawsuit against
CSIRO for what they claim is an invalid patent.[27]

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is the national government body for scientific research in Australia. It was founded in 1926 originally as the Advisory Council of Science and Industry.